Specter’s Fall

As political romances go, the affaire de coeur between Barack Obama and Arlen Specter was probably no more cynical, self-interested, or ephemeral than most. O.K., it was. But Specter, of all people, could not have been overly surprised when, as his own unhappy fate became increasingly evident, Obama found himself too busy elsewhere (in next-door Ohio, for example) to stump for the man whose defection from the G.O.P. seemed so critical to the Obama program just a year ago. Specter was likely far less moved when Obama declared last fall, “I love Arlen Specter,” than he was last spring, when Obama brought Specter along on his first fund-raising trip as a reconverted Democrat—a quick mega-million call on Hollywood.

Shortly after that event, last May, I asked Specter if he expected Obama to keep his vow of full support even in a seriously contested Democratic primary. His answer suggested the calculation of a former prosecutor, and career politician. “President Obama made his statement in front of the television cameras,” he said. “It is on the record.” Also on the record was Obama’s stumping for failed Democratic candidates in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts—a measure of the President’s own changed fortunes, to which, understandably enough, he did not wish to add another showy rebuff.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who once worked for Specter as an assistant D.A., and who has campaigned energetically for him, allowed last night that an Obama presence in Pennsylvania is not necessarily an asset to a candidate. “In some places it might have been helpful,” Rendell said. “In other places it might have been a disincentive.”

Specter, hitherto the consummate political survivor, should probably be given credit for making a race of it at all. His last year has been one long, strenuous series of pirouettes, beginning with a reversal of his (Republican) position of opposing labor’s favorite project, card-check, and ending last week, when he found himself in the awkward position of praising Obama’s new Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, after having voted against her confirmation as Solicitor General.

If Specter took being forsaken personally, he made an effort to conceal it, saying of Obama and Vice President Biden (who was in Philadelphia Monday, but avoided Specter), “They’ve done everything we’ve asked them to do.” The remark was as sincerely felt, no doubt, as the President’s long-ago declaration of love.